


carpe astra

by papyrocrat



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-10
Updated: 2010-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat





	carpe astra

When they talk he feels grounded in a way that he hasn’t since the attack. Solid. Sure. They have plenty to talk about; they are two intelligent, well-informed adults who happen to share the unique burden of the guardianship of humanity. After they discuss the welfare of the fleet, she memorializes art that’s become dust, or he learns the hard way that she plays a mean hand of cards, which in retrospect probably shouldn’t have surprised him.

But tonight as they curl onto his couch with their third whiskies, he talks about his sons when they were small. Laura listens intently and doesn’t ask too many questions about Zach and laughs in all the right places when he tells her about the time he’d found Lee stuck in a tree with a pillowcase around his neck, clinging desperately to the neighbors’ cat and insisting that Captain Caprica would have come up to save it too.

“What a wonderful story. The little ones are always my favorites, but I have to say I wish I’d had a few more like him. I’d certainly have fewer wrinkles.”

He tries to sound like a gentleman, one who doesn’t picture the lines that pull at her eyebrows when she’s trying to hide her frustrations every time he blinks. “I think you have exactly enough wrinkles.” _Dammit,_ he thinks, but she smiles graciously. “Besides, he was always a pain in the ass at naptime.”

“A stubborn little tough guy, hm?”

“I guess he comes by that honestly.” He isn’t teased too often these days, and it throws him a little off-balance. He’s forgotten that he took to the skies because he was always a little awkward on the ground. He’d rather pull his world along on his own shoulders than trip over the restraints tethering him to nature. But Laura anchors him in the cool dark country of his quarters and he doesn’t mind resting his wings.

“So what happened to the cat?”

“Frakkin’ animal.” She snorts into her scotch. “Neighbors could never control it. Nice folks, though.” He takes a sip and tells himself he isn’t getting maudlin over corpses whose last name he can’t even remember. “It was good to have neighbors. There were a few military families on that street. People worked odd hours, so there was always a light on. Like you never had to be alone.”

“Well, now you’re just being ridiculous, Bill.”

He takes a moment to wonder at her unusual abandonment of diplomacy, and why she doesn’t notice that the hand she lays on his cheek is like silk on sandpaper.

“Nobody _has_ to be alone.”

He looks at her and she gives the smallest of nods, and Bill Adama falls into the stars.


End file.
